Search and rescue (SAR) operations are typically mounted by emergency services aircraft and helicopters to locate, retrieve and rescue personnel over inaccessible areas. These operations typically use search patterns in an attempt to minimize time until locating missing personnel. However, many low-cost aircraft and helicopters used to support these operations often lack the equipment necessary to coordinate these efforts. For example, low cost helicopters such as emergency medical service (EMS) helicopters are equipped with a light versions of a flight management system (FMS) that does not support SAR patterns computation and/or do not have connectivity with other complex systems such as terrain databases and weather information. Moreover, the limited storage space in onboard computer of an aircraft/helicopter typically cannot store complex FMS data or other supporting systems such as terrain and navigation databases. Additionally, these Helicopters need to perform search and rescue operations in very remote locations where access to air traffic control (ATC) support may not be available. Hence, there is a need for a system and method for generating and transmitting an optimized search and rescue profile for an in-flight aircraft over a wide area of coverage.